Project concepts, project concept design, and other topics affecting the front-end of projects

Projects today make up roughly one third of GDP in developed nations. In many industries, the share of projects is even higher. Simultaneously – as we all are aware – projects fail too often for comfort. Project failure has two faces: On the one hand projects may be finished late, and cost more than expected, while the result’s functionality may also leave something to be desired. In short: the project was not done right. On the other hand, projects may turn out to have produced its result exactly to specifications, on time and within budget, only for it to turn out that the result is not what was needed, or that a different solution might have served everyone’s needs better. In short: not the right project was done.

The topics of this dissertation – project concepts and project concept design – play a central role in helping private and public organizations do the right project. As is argued in this dissertation, projects are commenced in the hope of making project concepts – the central, founding ideas for a project – come true. Hence, the question of doing the right project is essentially a question of designing the right project concepts. However, understanding the significance of project concept design is not the same as knowing how to design the right project concepts. Given that very little research on this topic exists, the dissertation and its essays set out to offer some fundamental concepts, outlining avenues for further research and tools to aid researchers in pursuing those avenues.

This dissertation contributes to the literature of the Study of Projects in several ways. First, it describes what project concepts are, showing that project concepts are both dualities and multiplicities. Second, it highlights the significance of the process and practice of project concept design and identifies five core functions (alignment, meshing, articulation, consideration, evaluation) through which project concept design can contribute to doing the right project. Third, the dissertation concludes that while project concept design primarily supports doing the right project, it also can contribute to doing the project right. Fourth, the dissertation discusses several environmental factors that contribute to or inhibit successful project concept design. Fifth, it discusses the practical difficulties facing endeavours to study project concept design and outlines a practice-oriented research method that it argues could support future research.